California is in disarray—and its major cities are faring even worse. Crime, homelessness, rampant drug use, and political unrest surrounding the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts have combined to make everyday life increasingly difficult across the state.
Even some of California’s wealthiest residents, long insulated from the fallout of Governor Gavin “A Little Dab’ll Do Ya” Newsom’s policies and the Democratic supermajority in Sacramento, are beginning to voice their frustration and signal that they’ve had enough.
Case in point: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff — once the poster child for California liberalism and an enthusiastic backer of Queen Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid — has had a change of heart. Now, he’s throwing his support behind President Trump and endorsing the administration’s plan to deploy National Guard troops to help restore order in his home state:
While other tech titans built private rocket ships and scooped up super yachts, the Salesforce founder and chief executive Marc Benioff was known for spreading large sums of money around San Francisco, his hometown. He tended toward the liberal side of Silicon Valley politics. He lectured other business leaders about the importance of helping homeless people instead of complaining about them.
But 2025 seems to have ushered in Benioff 2.0.
The benevolence remains, but the liberal leanings do not. In a wide-ranging interview, Mr. Benioff said this week that he avidly supported President Trump and thought National Guard troops should be deployed to San Francisco — an action that city leaders would consider beyond the pale.
City leaders appear increasingly unwilling to enforce even basic laws. They treat deporting illegal immigrants — the straightforward enforcement of existing federal immigration statutes — as unacceptable.
The same attitude extends to addressing open drug use or public indecency, with officials reluctant to act even when people openly use narcotics or defecate on city sidewalks:
Mr. Benioff’s shift serves as another example of a prominent Bay Area tech executive acceding to the Republican president’s view of the world. 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, at a White House dinner for tech barons, the OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman told Mr. Trump he was “a very refreshing change.”
That turnaround is telling — and it certainly raises doubts about Newsom’s viability for 2028.
Here’s the reality: people aren’t going to tolerate the incompetence and corruption of California’s Democratic leadership forever. San Francisco, once one of the world’s truly great cities, stands as the most tragic example.
Not that long ago, it was a jewel of the West — clean, vibrant, and welcoming. I’ve written before about how my father and his Army buddies visited the city in the fall of 1945, right after V-J Day. He remembered “Frisco” as a big, proud, and prosperous place — a far cry from the crime-ridden, drug-infested shell it’s become under decades of one-party rule.
It could be great again — all it would take is real leadership. With the right people in charge, San Francisco could reclaim its former glory. And if restoring order means bringing in a few hundred National Guard troops to help calm the chaos and rein in the “useful idiots” running wild in the streets, it seems some of Silicon Valley’s elite are finally ready to support that step.
