President Donald Trump is backing off his troop deployment to San Francisco for now after speaking with the city's mayors and some friends who live in the area.
Mayor Daniel Lurie said Trump called him Wednesday night to discuss the planned crackdown by federal law enforcement, and he told the president that he welcomed increased coordination with federal agents, but he warned that militarized immigration enforcement could set the city back.
“I told him the same thing I told our residents: San Francisco is on the rise. Visitors are coming back, buildings are getting leased and purchased, and workers are coming back to the office,” the mayor said in a statement.
Trump confirmed the reversal Thursday afternoon on Truth Social, saying he would give the city more time to make the improvements he deemed necessary.
"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 posted. "I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around."
"I told him I think he is making a mistake, because we can do it much faster, and remove the criminals that the Law does not permit him to remove," Trump added. "I told him, 'It’s an easier process if we do it, faster, stronger, and safer but, let’s see how you do?'"
Trump said that some of his tech industry allies, including Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, urged him to reconsider his plans.
"The people of San Francisco have come together on fighting Crime, especially since we began to take charge of that very nasty subject," Trump posted. "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. Stay tuned!"