Donald Trump threatened to send troops to San Francisco in an interview broadcast on Sunday as he seeks to push the US military into more Democratic-controlled cities.
The comments come as the president has already sent the National Guard to Los Angeles, Washington and Memphis, often against the wishes of local leaders, and as judges have halted their deployments in Chicago and Portland.
“Next we’re going to San Francisco,” he told Fox News.
“The difference is that I think they want us in San Francisco. San Francisco was really one of the greatest cities in the world. And fifteen years ago things went wrong.”
“We’re going to San Francisco and we’re going to make it great.”
Trump has repeatedly exaggerated the extent of crime and unrest in American cities to justify ordering deployments, which local Democratic leaders have largely opposed.
Late last month, he proposed using American cities as “training grounds” for the country’s armed forces.
The first deployment to Los Angeles, in June, came after sometimes unruly protests over widespread immigration raids that critics said appeared to target people largely based on their race or the language they spoke.
That effort was roundly criticized by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who regularly confronts the Republican billionaire and who is widely expected to be a presidential candidate in 2027.
Trump’s comments about San Francisco come after Marc Benioff, the boss of San Francisco-based tech giant Salesforce, apologized after calling for the National Guard to be sent to the city.
Benioff, once a darling of the left, has moved to the right in recent years, along with other tech titans.
Nevertheless, his support for a military intervention in San Francisco provoked anger and a public backlash that led former friends to distance themselves from him.
San Francisco occupies a special place in the Republican worldview.
The city, which has well-documented problems with homelessness and drug addiction, is regularly featured on right-wing cable channels as an unprecedented example of what they see as the demise of America’s urban centers under Democratic Party control.
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