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On Wednesday evening, san francisco Was scrambling to prepare for Impending flood of federal agentsActivist networks mobilized to monitor and stop ICE raids across the city, while city officials threatened to arrest Any fed who broke the law.
The next morning, seemingly out of nowhere, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that those plans are on hold for now – Due to the arguments of City Mayor Daniel Lurie and “My friends who live in the area.”
“The people of San Francisco have come together to fight crime, especially since we began to take charge of that very bad subject,” Trump wrote.
“Great people like Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff and others have called to say that the future of San Francisco is great. They want to give it a ‘shot.’ So, we will not be moving to San Francisco on Saturday. Stay tuned!”
At a press conference, he said he received “four or five calls” from “some incredible people, some of my friends, very successful people… some of the smartest business leaders”.
His decision was surprising because the White House Protests from local leaders were largely ignored When the number of immigration agents and federal National Guard troops was increasing in Democrat-run cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland and Washington, D.C.
so who are these modern day abraham Who convinced an angry President to hold his hand? And what might have made them so inspiring?
Daniel Lurie, town mayor and denim heir
In San Francisco’s famously intense and treacherous city politics, It is often described as a “knife fight in a phone booth”.Daniel Lurie is something unusual: a genuine political newcomer.
As a prolific former philanthropist and heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, he is well-connected in the business world. But until she won the mayor’s office last November as a moderate Democrat, she had almost no political experience.
As mayor, he has has been clearly alerted About to confront Donald Trump, unlike California Governor (and former SF Mayor) Gavin Newsom. while he sometimes criticizes federal actionsLurie almost never criticizes the president by name, and regularly dodges reporters’ questions about what he thinks of the man – even angering more progressive allies,
When? the new York Times asked themDuring a comically hushed interview this June, Lurie simply smiled and said nothing if he ever said the word “Trump.”
Now that strategy seems to be successful. “I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he very nicely asked that I give him a chance to see if he can change it,” Trump wrote Thursday morning.
“I told him I think he’s making a mistake, because we can do it a lot faster, and remove criminals whom the law doesn’t allow him to remove. I told him, ‘If we do it it’s an easier process, faster, stronger and safer but, let’s see how you do?'”
Lurie’s account of the conversation was similar, in which he mentioned his efforts to reduce petty crime and drug dealing on the city’s streets.
“I told [Trump] That’s what I tell our residents: San Francisco is growing. Visitors are coming back, buildings are being leased and purchased, and employees are coming back to the office, Lurie wrote in a press release.
“We have work to do, and we would welcome continued partnerships with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Attorneys to remove drugs and drug dealers from our streets, but having a military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery.”
Marc Benioff, CEO and mega-philanthropist
For years, Marc Benioff was considered San Francisco’s progressive savior. As CEO of business software giant Salesforce, his influence is visible for miles SF’s tallest skyscraper, the Salesforce Tower,
In 2018 he broke with his fellow tech giants to campaign for higher city taxes to help the homeless, and he donated more than $1 billion to hospitals, parks, schools, nonprofits and other causes around the Bay Area. (He is also the owner and president of Time magazine.)
So it came as an unpleasant shock to many when he announced last week that he was “all in” for Donald Trump sending federal troops into San Francisco, while misleadingly claiming that the Democrat had “defunds” the local police force. (Former Mayor London Breed promised to do so, but later reversed courseAnd its budget has really increased.)
Benioff said, “I fully support the president. I think he’s doing a great job.” told the new York Timesone in Follow-up interview with san francisco standardHe said: “Some parts of our city are still incredibly unsafe… I’ve seen things in San Francisco that need to be addressed directly by the police, and if the police can’t address it, then bring in whoever can.”
Yet within days, he repeated those comments after city officials, salesforce employeeFellow philanthropist (and widow of Steve Jobs) lauren powell jobsAnd one of his closest friends Pressured him publicly – and, perhaps, privately – to reconsider.
“After listening closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, and in the largest and safest way possible [Salesforce conference] In our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address security in San Francisco,” he posted on x,
“My previous comment came out of an abundance of caution regarding the incident, and I sincerely apologize for the concern it has caused.”
What happened between Benioff and Trump, we can only guess; Benioff did not respond to requests for comment. IndependentBut perhaps this experience helped him convince the President.
Of course, his regular praise for Trump on social media over the past few months may not have hurt. nor can TimeThe recent decision to print or publish Trump on its cover with the headline “His victory” A second, even more flattering cover later Trump criticized the first photo, calling it “very bad”.,
Jensen Huang, the king of AI hardware
When Donald Trump gave a speech with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in July, he admitted he had never heard of the guy until recently.” I said, ‘Who is he? What is his name? What is Nvidia? Trump joked,
but that was before A reported multi-month lobbying blitz By Huang and Nvidia, which is Currently the most valuable company in the world – with an unprecedented market capitalization of more than $4.4 trillion – due to its dominance in manufacturing the specialized computer chips that power modern artificial intelligence.
Huang, who owns a $38 million mansion in San Francisco’s affluent Pacific Heights neighborhood, known locally as “Billionaires’ Row,” has said little publicly about Trump or his immigration efforts. Still, he has worked hard behind the scenes To secure a deal to export its chips to China,
An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment.
The mysterious ‘other’
You may have noticed that there are only three people in this article, and Trump said he had “four or five calls.” So who are these “others” he talked about?
they probably was not Including Elon Musk, who has Trump vocally called for sending in the National Guard as the “only solution” to the “drug zombie apocalypse.”,
Beyond that we don’t know much, but we do have some clues.
the new York Times Reported on Thursday evening Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, ChatGPT’s parent company, was among the local luminaries who privately lobbied Trump to soften the blow, citing an unnamed inside source.
It makes sense: Altman featured prominently at Trump’s inauguration, Attended a banquet with Britain’s King Charles III (as Huang did), and is Part of the Trump administration’s $500bn “Project Stargate”. Building AI infrastructure.
Another possibility is Trevor Traina, a tech entrepreneur from an old-money SF family who served as Trump’s ambassador during his first term — and who somehow managed to defy the State Department’s ban on flying the LGBT+ pride flag from the US Embassy in Vienna.
On Tuesday he appeared on Fox News to publicly dispute the idea of sending in the National Guard. He declined to say whether he also lobbied personally, I am telling Standard, “Voters in SF elected leaders to fix these problems. And they deserve a chance to do that.”