\n<\/p>\n
Marc Benioff, the billionaire CEO of Salesforce and owner of Time magazine, apologized on Friday for saying he supported Donald Trump sending national guard troops to San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Benioff, who has been facing intensifying backlash in California, said in a post that after he \u201clistened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials \u2026 I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said his earlier comments \u201ccame from an abundance of caution\u201d around his company\u2019s major annual conference called Dreamforce, which took place this week. \u201cI sincerely apologize for the concern it caused. It\u2019s my firm belief that our city makes the most progress when we all work together in a spirit of partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n
The executive of the cloud-based software firm had expressed support for the federal deployment in an interview with the New York Times last week, saying: \u201cWe don\u2019t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I\u2019m all for it.\u201d The newspaper said he had made clear he \u201cavidly supported President Trump\u201d.<\/p>\n
The comments sparked an uproar, with critics noting longstanding federal law widely bans the domestic deployment of troops for criminal law enforcement duties.<\/p>\n
Benioff\u2019s pro-Trump remarks also suggested a sharp turn from his previous support of liberal policies. During Trump\u2019s first administration, he was outspoken about wealth inequality, backing a 2018 local ballot measure to tax large corporations in San Francisco to increase funding for homeless services. He called out other billionaires for \u201choarding\u201d their wealth in a Guardian interview at the time and criticized opponents of the measure, saying: \u201cYou\u2019re either for the homeless or you\u2019re for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CEO mostly lives in Hawaii now, according to the New York Times.<\/p>\n
He walked back his comments days after Trump suggested San Francisco could be the next target for federal troops\u2019 deployment. California and city leaders have said the intervention was not welcome or necessary, and immigrants\u2019 rights groups said they were bracing for a possible increase in raids, arrests and detentions.<\/p>\n
Benioff said in last week\u2019s interview that he believed San Francisco needed 1,000 more officers added to its 1,500-size force. During his conference, he said, there would be \u201ccops on every corner \u2026 how it used to be\u201d.<\/p>\n
Trump has repeatedly used false and exaggerated claims about out-of-control crime to justify federal crackdowns in liberal cities, which have attracted mass protests met with aggressive law enforcement responses.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the FBI director on Wednesday, the president said: \u201cI\u2019m going to be strongly recommending, at the request of government officials \u2026 that you start looking at San Francisco \u2026 one of our great cities 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and now it\u2019s a mess \u2026 Every American deserves to live in a community where they\u2019re not afraid of being mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted or shot.\u201d<\/p>\n
California\u2019s governor, Gavin Newsom, responded by noting he was San Francisco\u2019s mayor 15 years ago when Trump said the city was \u201cgreat\u201d, and saying the city had seen a 45% drop in homicides and 40% in robberies this year, compared with 2019.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s mayor and law enforcement leaders also touted declining crime and increasing police recruitment earlier this week, with the district attorney saying local leaders \u201chave this issue under control\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marc Benioff, the billionaire CEO of Salesforce and owner of Time magazine, apologized on Friday for saying he supported Donald Trump sending national guard troops to San Francisco. Benioff, who has been facing intensifying backlash in California, said in a post that after he \u201clistened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[7909,17072,3400,12630,4902,3768,4901,3533],"class_list":{"0":"post-28796","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-apologizes","9":"tag-benioff","10":"tag-billionaire","11":"tag-deployed","12":"tag-francisco","13":"tag-marc","14":"tag-san","15":"tag-troops"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}