In a Sunday morning interview with Fox News, Trump reinforced his plans to send National Guard troops to San Francisco while potentially invoking the Insurrection Act. He said, “they want us in San Francisco” and San Francisco was great before it went “woke.”
On the heels of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s retraction and apology and the week-long saga leading up to it, the president named San Francisco as the National Guard’s next destination during an appearance on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures, as the Chronicle reports. No timeline for the deployment has been announced, per KTVU.
“We're going to go to San Francisco. The difference is I think they want us in San Francisco. San Francisco was truly one of the great cities of the world. And then 15 years ago it went wrong. It went woke,” he said, per KTVU.
This prompted local politicians and residents to reiterate that the city does not need the federal government’s help. Per KTVU, Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener, who also gave a statement on the matter two days earlier, told Trump to “back off.”
“First of all, San Franciscans don't want him to send his personal army to occupy and invade San Francisco. We don't want that,” he said. “So he needs to go away, back off. But we also know that he hates San Francisco, he hates what we represent because we support immigrants, we support LGBTQ people.”
Trump is so demented & his brain disease so severe that he may actually believe San Franciscans want him to send his personal army & secret police here.
— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) October 19, 2025
Just to clarify: GO AWAY. WE DON’T WANT YOU HERE. BACK OFF. pic.twitter.com/8HHfGbFAxZ
Newsom also chimed in, per the Chronicle. “Fact check: Nobody wants you here,” he wrote on X. “You will ruin one of America’s greatest cities.”
Fact check: Nobody wants you here.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) October 19, 2025
You will ruin one of America's greatest cities. https://t.co/bdMoAhFmMS
Resident Richard Soriano told KTVU the city’s law enforcement is already keeping residents safe. “The city's putting their best effort in to make sure that it is safe around here. You see SFPD roaming around," he said.
Trump went on to tell FOX News he may invoke the rarely used Insurrection Act, which gives him the power to deploy troops on US soil. “Don’t forget I can use the Insurrection Act,” he said, per the Chronicle. “Fifty percent of the presidents almost have used that. And that’s unquestioned power. I choose not to, but I’m met constantly by fake politicians, politicians that think that they — you know, it’s not a part of the radical left movement to have safety. … These cities have to be safe.”
Trump has been met with legal battles in all the cities where he has attempted these National Guard deployments, except DC, which is in a unique legal position. A federal judge in San Francisco has already found that Trump violated the Posse Comitatus Act by having troops act as police there in Los Angeles. His attempts to send troops to Portland and Chicago have also been blocked.
Steve Woolpert, professor emeritus of politics at St. Mary's College of California told KTVU there’s little evidence that troops are needed in San Francisco. “I think it’ll be the same as it was in Portland, the same as it was in Chicago: two different courts, and they both said that the facts on the ground do not add up to the facts necessary to invoke Section 10 of the US Code or the Insurrection Act,” he said.
"We're going to go to San Francisco, and we’re going to make it great. We're going to make it great. It’ll be great again. San Francisco is a great city. It won't be great if it keeps going like this," Trump reiterated to FOX News — sounding like a broken record — per KTVU.
Image: Scott Olson/Getty Images
Previously: Saturday Links: A Beleaguered Benioff Retracts, Apologizes for National Guard Remarks
Regarding Benioff's Trumpy Turn: Salesforce Was Pitching a 'Talent Acquisition' Contract to ICE
