Donald Trump is doing “a great job” as president. If you don’t believe it, just check with local boy billionaire Marc Benioff, who told as much to the paper of record. In that interview, clearly designed to make San Francisco heads explode, he also said federal troops would be a good idea to fight crime in San Francisco.
In the weekend New York Times interview, the paper said “Mr. Benioff said this week that he avidly supported President Trump and thought National Guard troops should be deployed to San Francisco . . . “
“We don’t have enough cops, so if [National Guard troops] can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff reportedly said.
A couple of thoughts on that recommendation, which will make Benioff’s next bro-chat with Gov. Gavin Newsom a bit awkward. But first, some of the blowback.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins posted on social media a rebuke of the idea of using troops for law enforcement, saying, “If you come to San Francisco and illegally harass our residents, use excessive force or cross any other boundaries that the law proscribes, I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day.”
Jenkins might be confusing National Guard troops with the deployments of masked ICE agents. The Guards, who generally aren’t able to do much other than guard buildings, definitely do not want to spend their time harassing, using excessive force, or crossing other boundaries. They want to go home. They’re not even getting paid for service during the government shutdown.
The Guard is comprised of patriotic Americans who want to help defend their country; they do it for little pay and invest a significant amount of their own time to be ready to assist when an emergency arises. The fact that many on the far left will conflate the Guard indiscriminately with the right-wing military cosplayers who sign up for the ICE expansion is only a plus for Trump and his supporters (who now include, apparently, Marc Benioff).
National Guard troops under the command of the president are prohibited by federal law from engaging in law enforcement activities.
San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey (District 6) posted, “This is a slap in the face to San Francisco. It’s insulting to our cops, and it’s honestly galling to those of us who’ve been fighting hard over the last few years to fully staff our @SFPD. Marc @Benioff, I pleaded for your support last year for the Prop F Charter Amendment I wrote, which would have swelled our police staffing ranks by hundreds of officers. And while I appreciated your $50K donation — one week before the election — it wasn’t enough to win. And it wasn’t even CLOSE to the $8+ million you spent to pass the dubious Prop C homelessness tax in 2018.”
The Times notes that Benioff is just the latest Bay Area tech titan to tilt Trumpward. “Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, gave Mr. Trump a 24-karat gold gift and heaped praise upon the president in an August visit to the Oval Office. Last month . . . Sam Altman told Mr. Trump he was ‘a very refreshing change.’”
Some of this is just CYA-ing to protect their business interests, but telling the president to “send in the troops” might be a bit more than just performative self-debasement.
So back to Benioff and his, I’m sure, heartfelt plea to the president. I hope he gives more thought to ideas for running his company than he did to this, because there’s another option besides the legally and constitutionally sketchy use of National Guard troops for law enforcement. It’s something that helped Bill Clinton win the White House three and a half decades ago.
Clinton ran on a promise to hire 100,000 more police officers; once in office, that became a part of a big crime bill in 1994, which included some other, more dubious things (opponents of prison overuse, there’s your target). It’s something for which the far left has never forgiven him.
More important, National Guard troops can’t be law enforcement. As University of Minnesota law professor Richard Painter told CBS News in September, “National Guard troops under the command of the governor of a state can perform law enforcement duties within that state.” However, “National Guard troops under the command of the president of the United States have a status similar to the U.S. military and are prohibited by federal law from engaging in law enforcement activities in the U.S. There are very few exceptions that would allow federal troops to be deployed for domestic law enforcement purposes.”
Cleaning up the Tenderloin likely is not one of them. That is and should be a local responsibility, where the local officials are at least theoretically susceptible to voter pressure to do their jobs.
As I’ve noted in the past, I live in Chicago, which is one of the liberal cities the president is trying to intimidate by sending in National Guard troops, ostensibly to fight crime. Chicago has more than 12,000 sworn officers, the second-largest police force in the nation. Adding 200 National Guard troops from Texas and 300 from Illinois to the city is not going to dent violent crime, especially when they can do no more than say, “Please don’t do that.” Murders in the city, by the way, are already the lowest they’ve been since 1970. If Trump and Benioff want to pony up for more trained police officers, cool.
There are some things that we already know how to do. Want to defeat Russia’s takeover of a democratic state? Send arms and money. Want to deal with the loss of faith in — and adherence to — the democratic system and the rule of law? Teach civics in schools. Let churches and families raise people of high moral character. Want to fight crime? Hire more police — and tax billionaires so we can afford to hire them.
There’s Benioff’s role.