
President Donald Trump said Thursday that he is calling off plans to deploy federal troops to San Francisco after speaking to the city’s mayor.
“The Federal Government was preparing to ‘surge’ San Francisco, California, on Saturday, but friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge in that the Mayor, Daniel Lurie, was making substantial progress,” Trump’s post said.
He added that some of the “friends” who asked Trump to hold off on deploying the National Guard in San Francisco included the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, and the CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff.
“The people of San Francisco have come together on fighting Crime, especially since we began to take charge of that very nasty subject. Great people like Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff, and others have called saying that the future of San Francisco is great. They want to give it a ‘shot.’ Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday,” the president wrote.
In a separate statement, Lurie confirmed that he spoke to Trump last night, saying, “I told him the same thing I told our residents: San Francisco is on the rise.”
“We have work to do, and we would welcome continued partnerships with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Attorney to get drugs and drug dealers off our streets, but having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery,” the mayor added. “We appreciate that the president understands that we are the global hub for technology, and when San Francisco is strong, our country is strong.”
Lurie also said that he spoke to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday and she confirmed that the president was calling off plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco.