Trump says tech CEOs helped convince him not to 'surge' San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has earned praise for his defusing of a situation where federal immigration agents, and possibly, troops, seemed poised to intervene in the city. But, while President Donald Trump said Mayor Lurie asked him “very nicely” to give the city a chance, remarks the president made Thursday afternoon implied it was the city’s billionaire tech CEOs — not its elected mayor — that influenced him to call off the surge.

“As you probably know, maybe you heard, we were going do a big surge in San Francisco, but I got a great call from some incredible people, some friends of mine, very successful people. Marc, who everybody knows, and Jensen, everybody knows Jensen,” Trump said, referring to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and his Nvidia counterpart, Jensen Huang.

“And others called me from San Francisco. And they said we’re working really, really hard with the mayor and we’re making progress. Would be possible for you hold off to for you to hold off the surge?” Trump continued, saying he’d had four or five calls with people he knew in San Francisco.

City leaders had been bracing for federal intervention in the city following remarks Benioff made about wanting the National Guard deployed to the city to The New York Times the week before his company’s annual Dreamforce conference.

“We’re going to San Francisco. The difference is, I think they want us in San Francisco,” Trump told Fox News several days after Benioff had made his remarks.

After much fallout, including billionaire venture capitalist Ron Conway publicly resigning from the Salesforce board, Benioff later walked back and apologized for his comments. In his comments Thursday, Trump appeared to credit Benioff and his fellow tech CEOs for his decision to stand down the surge.

“Some of the smartest business leaders and they are working very well with the police department to do a good job,” Trump said. “So, we are holding off that surge, everybody. And we’ll let them see if they can do it.”

After taking a mostly antagonistic stance toward him in his first term, many of the leading tech CEOs, in the Bay Area and elsewhere, have been vocally supportive of Trump in his second. Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and most notably, Elon Musk, have all backed Trump to some extent, and appear to have gained some influence with him.

Also perhaps not lost on Trump, is that surging tech stocks, fueled in large part by San Francisco’s nascent artificial intelligence industry, have been a leading light in an economy that’s otherwise been bogged down by slow job growth and high inflation.

Now, while it appears plans to “surge” San Francisco are at least on hold, if not canceled altogether, Trump seems to be turning his attention elsewhere.

San Francisco, Trump said, “has the potential very quickly, to be a great city again and these are the companies that are there that are all working, and those are the people that asked me, ‘Could you do away with the surge?’ And let’s see how it works. And we’ll do that, if we need to, we’ll do it. But it’s possible we won’t need to, and we’ll be focusing on other places like Chicago.”